


forget we're dying

by orphan_account



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age of Adaline Fusion, Casual Sex, Happy Ending, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Shane doesn't age, follows the movie's major plot points but I changed a lot of the rest, hell yeah boyos you guessed it, no internalised homophobia, non-graphic car accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 12:03:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14332086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Shane can count all the aliases he’s had over the years on one hand. or, Shane is struck by lightning and stops aging. He's fine keeping it a secret until he meets Ryan.





	forget we're dying

**Author's Note:**

> I got the idea for this at like 2 in the morning and spent the weekend on it.  
>  **Warning: contains a non-graphic description of a car accident.**

Shane can count all the aliases he’s had over the years on one hand.

Before he started destroying the old passports, somewhere around thirty years ago, he kept them all.

 _McClintock, Benjamin_ , his first one had read.

Of course, he doesn’t tell the kid who’s making him his new fake passport that.

Instead, he hands him an envelope with a thousand dollars cash, and when he advises the kid to use his smarts somewhere else, the kid asks, “are you a cop?”

“No,” Shane shakes his head with a smile while he pockets the passport, “I’m the furthest thing from a cop you can think of.”

Then he’s out the door, and he flips open the passport on the street to see his picture next to a new name. _Ashley, Morris_. _Born January 1, 1984_.

He glances at his watch. He’s going to be late for work if he doesn’t hurry.

__________________________

 

When Shane climbs up the steps into the big glass doors of the Natural History Museum, it’s expectedly quiet; it’s New Year’s Eve, after all. Most of his coworkers are elsewhere, probably lost in the holiday period daze, and it looks like visitors are few and far between.

He makes his way up another flight of steps and swipes in to enter a big-windowed office, littered with papers and notes on each wall and books on every desk.

“Hey man,” his co-worker greets him with a smile from her desk when he passes it. “any plans tonight?”

“Hey, Jen. Nope, just staying home with wine and my cat.”

Jen scoffs, doesn’t even look up from her computer when she tells him, “you’re such an old man.”

“You’d be surprised.” He gives her a smile before he heads to his own desk at the corner of the room.

His workspace is cluttered, but it’s comforting in its own way; notebooks and post-it notes and litter the wooden desk, his keyboard almost always covered in hand-written paper instead.

In the middle of the organised chaos, placed gently to the side by some foreign hands after he left work yesterday, probably, is a small box marked “Becoming LA: additions to curate - WW2 to present”.

Shane’s work as an assistant curator for the museum has been the most rewarding thing he’s done in a long time; he essentially gets to just look at historical things, fact-checks them, and most of the time people leave him alone in his corner of the office with coffee. He’d started as just an intern, but his eye for detail had caught the director’s attention, and now, a few years down the line, he’s in a great position.

He sighs happily as he opens the box of late twentieth-century documentation; a huge catalogue, just how he likes them, detailing exactly what the newly proposed additions are and why they should be put in the collection. Shane gets out a red pen from a mug that’s full of them, settles in his chair, and starts annotating.

The first thing he annotates is a car battery that says it’s from 1946. “Wrong date - this particular type of battery wasn’t introduced until 1949.”

_______________

 

_San Francisco, 1949_

_The war hadn’t been kind to Shane — then, Benjamin, or Banjo for short — as a scientist. Turns out, there was a big difference between assisting medical institutes in Illinois and being sent to care for wounded men in Europe._

_When he returned, disembarking a boat in the San Francisco port, it seemed like a good place to settle for now. As a war veteran doctor, the medical corp welcomed him with open arms, and so, just like that, Shane had chosen his place of residence for the next while._

__________________

 

“Great work as always, Madej,” his superior says a few hours later, trying to decipher the annotations and what they even mean. “you have a great eye. Can we talk in private?” 

The years have made Shane into a perceptive person. He can tell before he’s even pulled into the bright and decorated office that he’s about to be offered a promotion, and he’s right. “I’ll think about it,” is what he says. _I’ll be leaving this place at the end of the upcoming year_ remains unsaid and secret.

________________

 

Later, Shane walks through the threshold of his apartment and, like promised, sets the bottle of wine on the kitchen counter and bends down to greet his cat. “Greg, how you been, man? Excited for another year with your old embarrassing roommate?”

Greg just purrs and headbutts his hand.

“Yeah, agreed.”

_________________

 

_Los Angeles, 2008_

_There was no getting around it: Shane was lonely. The past couple of decades had been rough, and moving around from place to place was getting a bit trickier now that there were cameras everywhere and more checks than ever; Shane wasn’t particularly fond of photos._

_After a couple decades of living in Europe and learning French, German and Spanish, he decided to head home to America. Los Angeles seemed like a good choice._

_Still, a couple months into living in his newly-bought apartment, Shane found himself desolate; no one to care for or wait for him when he got home had caught up with him, finally. He hadn’t dated in what, thirty years? That felt too difficult._

_So Shane did the next best thing: he adopted a cat._

_“You look like a Greg,” Shane said while he watched the one-year-old cat he’d just brought home from the local shelter climb up onto his couch, although with difficulty._

_Greg was missing his right leg, and his fur was messy, which had led to no one wanting him. Shane just knew the second he’d laid eyes on him._

_Yeah, this cat would fit right in._

_________________

 

The new year comes without much of a fanfare. Shane sits on the couch with Greg in his lap, already wine drowsy, and Greg meows when the countdown on the TV reaches zero.

“Thanks, dude. Happy New Year to you too.”

Greg meows again.

“And Happy Birthday to me, I know, I know. Man, 2018, huh?” Shane turns off the TV and looks at himself reflected in the black screen. “I don’t look half bad for eighty-eight years old.”

It’s 2018, Shane is eighty-eight, and he doesn’t look a day over thirty-three.

He hasn’t since June 15th, 1953.

_________________

 

_San Francisco, 1953_

_“You don’t understand, do you? They fired me because of who I am!”_

_“Of course I do, darling, but— this doesn’t have to be the end. We could move somewhere new. I could get a better medical job. Support us both.”_

_“And how are you going to justify that you live with a known pervert, as they put it? They’ll investigate you and find out you’re in love with me. Then you’ll lose your job, and family, and everything. I don’t want that for you.”_

_“There must be a way we can work this out, just— don’t go, please.”_

_“It’s too late. I’m getting on that boat and I’m going. Goodbye, sweetheart.”_

_And so, the man Shane had loved since 1950 walked out the door to board a boat to Europe. The past couple of months had been tough; on April 27th, the president had issued an Executive Order banning any and all gay and lesbian employees from working for a federal agency. In the months that followed, even some non-federal employers started firing workers they thought of as perverts, and Shane’s partner had been one of them._

_Shane felt numb at first, but then came the guilt. He’d always been careful to hide his attraction to both men and women, which meant that he’d never outwardly faced any oppression for his sexuality in his daily life, and it made him sick to his stomach—what, just because he was better at hiding this visceral part of him, he deserved to keep his job?_

_After sobbing on his couch and feeling sorry for himself, Shane decided enough was enough. He was going to drive to the medical institute he now worked out and tell them the truth, and if they fired him for it, then so be it. He had enough saved to board a boat to Europe and join the man he loved, and he’d do so._

_Shane got into his car and started the twenty-minute drive to work, tears still falling on his face as he gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white. It was storming outside, thunder threatening to strike at any time, the sky dark like his thoughts._

_What he didn’t see through the curtain of tears was someone driving way above the speed limit to his right on Golden Gate bridge, about to drive straight into him._

_His car flew into the bay._

_The drunk driver drove on._

_Shane’s death came a little before the impact, his heart stopping and body shutting down._

_Then lightning struck the water at a speed of about 200,000 miles per hour and essentially defibrillated Shane’s heart back into action._

_He opened his eyes to water filling his upturned car and fumbled to undo his seatbelt and get out, and a few seconds later he took his first breath since he’d died._

_Shane wasn’t any more religious than the average person, but at that moment, walking on the side of the road in soaked clothes and watching his car sink, he believed it was a sign._

_He returned home, still unaware of the lightning’s effect on his cells, and drank a glass of wine. He felt like he deserved it._

_________________ _  
_

 

It’s February when Shane is asked, “Madej? Do you have a minute?”

Shane looks up from his work to see his boss standing there with a young black-haired man who he’s pretty sure he’s seen before. What is he doing here?

“Uh, yeah. What— what do you need?” he asks, getting up and taking his mug of tea with him.

“This young man here found a World War II artefact while— what is it you said you do?”

“Ghost hunting,” he answers with a proud smile on his face. “I visit abandoned places with my friends on the weekend and film it.”

Shane squints down at him. It is undeniably the same man he’d hooked up with a couple weeks back who really wanted his number. For a second, Shane wonders if maybe he googled him out of spite because he snuck out in the morning and found an excuse to come to his work.

“What did you find, then? Not a ghost, I imagine.”

“About that, let’s take this to my office,” Shane’s boss gestures.

It turns out Ryan —who introduces himself again even though they both know they’ve met before— found a 1940s era gun in the basement of an abandoned and supposedly haunted house in the LA suburbs and wants to donate it to the museum.

“Yeah, it’s genuine alright”, Shane tells his superior as he puts the weapon back into the box it was brought in and takes off his gloves. “Thank you for bringing this in.”

“Wonderful. Would you like to come back on Thursday so we can have a formal handoff?”

“Sure,” Ryan obliges.

Shane walks him to the office door, and just before he can open his mouth to say goodbye, Ryan cuts him off. “I’ll donate it on one condition.”

“We don’t offer money, I’m afraid. Just your name on a little piece of white cardboard.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about money,” he smirks, “I meant a date.”

Shane sighs. He’s relentless, and while he’s flattered, he’s not used to this; not used to men being so forward with him, and much less used to being pursued.

“Fine, but only because I love my job.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, big guy.”

Ryan’s out the door in a flash after giving him his number, and Shane rubs his temples. _What the fuck am I getting myself into?_ he thinks as he sits back at his desk.

_________________

 

Indeed, Thursday comes, and with it, a picture is taken of Ryan handing the artefact to the newly-appointed curator.

“I still don’t get why you declined that job,” Jen tells him as they watch from behind the photographer, drinking the champagne their bosses keep for special occasions like this.

“I’m not a fan of the spotlight is all,” Shane lies.

Since he’d figured out his, well, condition, pictures have been his sworn enemy; you can’t exactly afford to be immortalised on photographic paper with a date when you don’t age.

Shane had learned that the hard way.

_________________

 

_San Francisco, 1968_

_“Sir, there’s a problem with your license,” the officer told him after pulling him over for a routine check._

_“Really? I got it renewed last month.”_

_“Well, see, it says on here that you were born in 1920, which would make you forty-eight, but you don’t look a day over thirty. Can I see your real license?”_

_“This is my real license.”_

_“Sir, I’m gonna need you to come with me.”_

_Shane rarely lost his cool; he was usually calm and collected, but in the back of the police car, he was sweating buckets. He knew there wasn’t really a way for him to explain his youthful looks, but it had never come up before: his mother had passed away a decade ago, following his father, and he seldom saw his brother. When people asked, he told them he was thirty-three, and they believed him._

_He left the station a couple of hours later with a fine for a couple hundred dollars in his pocket. The cops believing he had a fake ID was better than them knowing the truth._

_When two men in suits showed up at his workplace a couple months later holding FBI badges, the panic he’d felt in the cop car returned._

_“We believe you could assist us in researching cell regeneration.”_

_“I— why me? I haven’t found anything. I just research it in my spare time when I’m not seeing patients.’_

_“Don’t try to fool us, doctor McClintock,” the agent said in an intimidating tone, “we know about your…condition.”_

_“Again, I have no idea what you’re talking about here.”_

_The other agent who’d been quiet the whole time handed him a card. “You have until tomorrow to come to us willingly, or we’ll make sure you come with us in other ways. Think about this.”_

_They left with a slammed door, and Shane buried a scream into his hands. He’d been relatively careful, but clearly not enough; it had just not occurred to him that anyone would report him or that the cops would see beyond a fake driving license and try to find his birth certificate._

_So, after waiting to make sure the agents were gone, Shane packed up his research and left his office in the middle of the day. He plucked from his savings and bought the first ticket to England._

_He settled in a small town in the south after buying a fake passport in London._

_His new passport read Tinsley, CC, and he held his breath when walking down the street sometimes, but he never heard from the FBI again._

_________________ _  
_

 

Ryan picks Shane up in front of his apartment late on Friday, and he drives a small car Shane folds himself into.

“You still haven’t told me where you’re taking me.”

“Yeah, about that,” Ryan starts as he pulls out of the parking spot and starts driving away, “we’re going to hunt some ghosts.”

Shane just laughs. “What the fuck, Ryan? That’s your idea of a date?”

“Hey, I’m sharing what I love with you. Don’t be fucking rude.”

Shane would feel bad if Ryan wasn’t saying that with a huge grin on his face.

_________________

 

“So anyway, I think this room was where they processed patients, and it’s meant to be haunted.”

The location’s an abandoned hospital a couple hours outside of LA, and Ryan isn’t filming today, which Shane silently thanks God for — Ryan’s been there before, Shane learns, but the owners wouldn’t let him film a video.

As he listens to Ryan tell him different facts about the way the hospital was used in the forties, Shane can’t help but bite his lip; some of what he’s saying is completely inaccurate, as any person who’s ever worked in a hospital or been a doctor would know. The temptation to correct this short smartass is high, but he can’t be bothered to come up with an excuse for having intimate medical knowledge right now, so he drops it.

“I can’t believe I’m debating asking you on another date even though you don’t think ghosts are real,” Ryan tells him later when they’re standing outside of Shane’s building, well into the night to the point that the sun is peeking out of the clouds.

“Well, _I_ can’t believe I’m considering saying yes when you think it’s anything more than the wind and old buildings settling,” Shane retorts.

They stand in silence for a few moments, looking each other in the eye, and Shane breaks first. “You wanna come up? Unless you’re too tired.”

“Nice try, but I don’t fuck on the first date.”

“Oh, right. I forgot; you fuck on the first bar conversation.”

“I’m hurt,” Ryan laughs, putting a hand over his hurt in pretend offence.

Shane watches him drive away with his hands in his pockets, and he recognises the signs; the smiling and bickering, and the tiny ache in his heart seeing him leave. His head is telling him to _run, run, run,_ and his heart is whispering _let yourself have this._ He’s not sure which one he’s going to listen to just yet, but he does have a rough idea.

It’s six thirty in the morning when he finally crashes into bed, Greg climbing up next to him, and he sighs.

“What would you do, dude?”

Greg nuzzles into him.

“Yeah, I know. Goodnight, buddy.”

He pictures Ryan’s smile and his hands grabbing the sheets a little too well before sleep finally grabs him.

_________________

 

_Los Angeles, 2018_

_Ryan pushed Shane into his apartment. They were both a couple drinks in, just socially lubricated enough that they’d flirted with each other at the bar, and Shane was making quick work of Ryan’s pants now._

_By the time they reached the bedroom, they were both grunting in unison, open and wanting, aching to get close._

_Ryan rode him in the light of the bedside lamp, and Shane took in the sight, held him by the waist._

_He felt a little guilty to be slipping out without a word in the morning, but in his defence, he couldn’t have foreseen then that fate would reunite them two weeks later when Ryan showed up at his desk._

_________________

 

Their second date happens sooner than Shane expected it to; one day just as he’s leaving work, his phone buzzes.

[6:03 PM]: hey, wanna grab dinner with me?

He ponders it for a little bit, thinking of the hot cup of tea and books that are waiting for him at home, but before he knows it, his fingers are typing back a response.

[6:04 PM]: Sure.

He can’t say he didn’t see it coming when, later, Ryan kisses his neck and throws his boxers off the bed.

He falls asleep at Ryan's place again, and this time it doesn't even cross his mind to leave in the morning.

_________________

 

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Ryan mumbles in the morning, brushing a hair strand out of Shane’s face.

“Mmm, what time is it?”

“About seven thirty, I think?”

Shane shoots up quickly hearing that. He scrambles to get up and find the underwear Ryan discarded somewhere in his room last night, frantically waking up all at once. “Fuck!”

“Hey, relax—”

“I start work in like thirty minutes and you don’t exactly live next door, man.”

Ryan sits up slowly, rubbing at the corner of his eye, still waking up. “Just tell them there was traffic or your alarm didn’t go off or somethin’”.

He really doesn’t have time for this, but he still notes how Ryan’s voice is a lot deeper, like honey in the morning glow.

“Yeah, sure—I’m borrowing this shirt. Oh, and by the way,” he gestures at Ryan’s wall, the one covered with chalkboard paint, “that quote in German is incorrect, you might wanna check more than Google translate.”

“You speak German?”

“I’m a man of many talents, baby,” he winks.

And just like that, he’s out the door with no time for coffee, dressed all messy and wearing a shirt out of Ryan’s closet, a hickey sucked into his collarbone.

_________________

 

After that, things are fast and easy, and Shane would hate that if it didn’t feel so damn _good_ to have someone to text when he gets off work and someone to watch new movies with; in the span of a few months, Ryan becomes his person _,_ and every time Shane says the words _my boyfriend_ out loud to someone else, it feels freeing.

Things aren’t perfect in this century, but they’re certainly a lot better— with almost half of his co-workers being some form of queer art nerd, he doesn’t have to hide or feel shame.

He can hold Ryan’s hand in the street with moderate safety before it’s dark out, and maybe his shorter counterpart doesn’t get why it’s so special to him, mistakes it just for affection, but he doesn’t mind.

One of the biggest signs Ryan is good for him is that the most important person in his life, his cat Greg, immediately warms up to him; lets Ryan cuddle him and scratch him behind the ears and rubs against his ankles when they’re cooking breakfast in the morning.

Life is good for the first time in ages, but something gnaws at Shane’s brain and keeps him up sometimes.

From time to time, his eyes will get glassy like he’s not all there, and in those moments Shane is wondering whether or not he should tell Ryan; if he should show him the photo of him as an army doctor in 1940, looking only a little younger than he does now. There’s this part of him that tells him Ryan will understand, being someone who entertains weirder theories daily, but the other side of himself says he’ll run, or worse, tell the whole world about his condition just to be the boy who found a freak science anomaly.

He knows that as it stands, he has about ten years give or take until they start looking different in age— until Ryan starts to grey and he doesn’t.

Besides, time is running out for this particular identity; it’s April, and by the end of the year, he’ll need to leave Shane Madej behind and become someone else somewhere else to avoid detection. How would he even begin to explain that to perfect, soft and good Ryan?

“Go to sleep, babe,” Ryan says as he pulls him out of his worrying in the dead of night, cuddling into his side with Greg at his feet.

“I love you,” Shane responds, even though he’s pretty sure Ryan is already back asleep and doesn’t hear him.

It scares him how much he means it.

_________________

 

About six months into their relationship, they’re having pizza on Shane’s couch when Ryan shows him an e-mail on his phone.

“ _Save the date: Helen & Sara’s wedding bash_,” the email reads in pink letters surrounded by flowers.

Ryan asks him to be his date, and against his better judgement, Shane says yes. After all, if he’s just one of the guests’ date, he shouldn’t have to pose for pictures, and god, the thought of seeing Ryan dressed in a formal suit is enough to compromise him.

_________________

 

Their lodging in Bar Harbor, Maine is picturesque, to say the least. The Bar Harbor Inn where they’re staying and the wedding is being held is this huge hotel and Ryan is all wide-eyed at it like he’s never seen anything like it before. Shane finds it endearing.

Ryan and Shane’s hotel room overlooks some of the Atlantic ocean, in the distance, and Shane loves it. Even though he’s been able to live in comfortable places due to the fact he invested in companies back in the seventies and kept adding signees to his original bank account to receive the funds, but he realises then that the company of someone you care for makes everything better.

The night before the wedding, they decide to take advantage of the tub in the bathroom and they stay in there for a total of twenty minutes before they have to move to the king-sized bed; Shane glances at the view out of their window for an instant while he fucks Ryan into the mattress.

He still doesn’t know what he’s going to do, but for now, this is nice. Ryan’s whimpers into the hotel pillow and sweaty cuddles afterwards are nice. Standing on the balcony and hugging Ryan from behind with his arms wrapped around his shoulders while they watch the sunset is nice.

_________________

 

The wedding goes great until it doesn’t.

After the actual ceremony, a reception is held in the hotel bar, and Shane is laughing with his arm around Ryan’s shoulder and a champagne glass in hand when an old lady with curly hair pulled into a neat updo approaches him.

“CC?” she says in an incredulous voice, eyes widening at the sight of Shane.

“That’s—uh, that’s my father. I get that a lot, apparently he used to look just like me when he was younger.”

 _Remain calm,_ Shane tries to tell himself, but his stomach suddenly feels like it’s about to swim up his throat; _no this can’t be. Not today._

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the old lady apologises, putting a hand on his shoulder. “you just look so much like him. I’m Francesca Norris, Sara’s aunt; I knew your father, about forty years ago.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” he smiles, taking his arm off Ryan’s shoulder to shake her hand. “my father knew many people but he never told me about most of them before he passed.”

_________________

 

_The Isle of Wight, 1971_

_Shane had been living on The Island for a couple of years when fate thrust a beautiful woman right into his arms._

_They met in a simple way; her car was stranded on the side of the road, and Shane, then CC Tinsley, helped her start again by giving her his spare car battery._

_If Shane didn’t believe in love at first sight before, he started then. She was gorgeous, with long dark curly hair and glasses._

_He bonded with Francesca over the fact they were both American immigrants come to The Island to find some inner peace, away from the loud cities and endless conflicts._

_After about three years of them being together, Francesca’s family came to The Island to visit, and on a walk along the coast, her father had pulled Shane aside and asked him about children and marriage._

_This had been enough to snap him back to the reality of his situation — no matter how good things were or how great their bodies fit together, this couldn’t last. He could never father any children, for fear of them realising eventually that he wasn’t aging and having to leave them behind._

_For the second time in his life, Shane ran without looking back._

_It broke his heart to sneak out while she was sleeping, her hair a mess and the sheets wrapped around her body, but he knew he had to._

_________________

 

To tell the truth, Shane had thought of Francesca Norris nearly every day for a few decades while travelling through Europe; every woman he had brief flings with reminded him of her and to see her in front of him showing signs of time where he doesn’t reopens the wound a little.

“Wait, you said you met his dad in England? So your dad was English?” Ryan asks later when they’re all seated at a table out on the deck.

“He just travelled around Europe for a while. His dad coming back from the war really did a number on him.” _Lying by omission isn’t technically lying,_ Shane thinks as he says the words.

“God, your father looked just like you, all handsome and bearded. Except, obviously, he liked ladies.”

Shane can tell there isn’t any judgement in her voice, and he smiles weakly; while he wants to tell her people can, in fact, like multiple genders, he isn’t going to correct her and raise suspicion.

He’s almost in the clear when Ryan gets called back inside for some photos; a couple minutes of small talk later, he mechanically goes to run his hand through his hair, and he sees Francesca’s eyes widen just like when she first spotted him.

“That— that scar,” she reaches for his right hand and traces the side of it with her fingers. “how is this possible?”

“I—I don’t—” Shane is back to full-on panic mode. He knows he can’t run from this, that he’s cornered.

“I know it’s you, CC. I sewed up that damn scar myself when you tried to make that bookshelf.”

“I had to leave,” he croaks out. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“I can’t. I just— I can’t.”

She looks into the distance then, looking teary, and Shane swallows a sob himself. God, he’d been so stupid. He should have run and excused himself the second he saw Francesca, but of course, he’d been selfish and wanted to know how her life had been since he left.

“Please, you have to tell him,” she finally says after what feels like an eternity. “or I will.”

This flips the same switch the FBI agent telling him to give himself up had a lifetime ago, and Shane goes to get up, to do the one thing he’s gotten good at, which is running.

“CC!” he hears her call after him.

He doesn’t look back.

He gets into the rental car they’d gotten to get here and enjoy the scenic route from the airport a day earlier, and he calculates it all in his head; if he can get to the airport and make the earliest flight, he can grab Greg and be out of the state or country before the end of the day.

He’s so frantic, doing a thousand different types of math in his head, that he doesn’t notice the truck driving at full speed from the left at the first intersection he drives through.

Shane flies through the windshield in his suit.

For the second time in his life, his heart stops.

_________________

 

 _“_ We’re losing him! Come on!”

“Clear,” a paramedic calls before he puts the defibrillator’s paddles on the lifeless man on the side of the road.

Shane opens his eyes and takes a breath.

When he comes to, he vaguely sees Ryan’s face as he’s hurried into an ambulance; tan fingers lacing with his own in the vehicle, amongst the sirens he can hear like he’s underwater.

_________________

 

Shane wakes up a couple days later to see Ryan by his side.

There's no _holy shit, you’re awake_ — Ryan just holds him, tells him he’s really fucking lucky he only has a scraped face, a broken arm and a couple broken ribs.

Then, past the initial hug, Shane looks anywhere but at his partner. “I guess I owe you an explanation,” he manages.

“Yeah, I think you do.”

So, in the hospital light, Shane tells him. He tells Ryan to reach into his pocket to see the photo of him and Francesca in 1973, the last picture taken of him, and Ryan just looks at him with his wide eyes like he’s seen a ghost.

“I—you’re still not off the hook for scaring me like that, big guy,” Ryan smiles at him when he’s done explaining it all.

Shane supposes that’s fair.

_________________

 

“What should I call you? Your birth name?” Ryan asks him after he watches the doctor sign Shane’s discharge papers from the hospital.

“Hmm, that feels a lifetime ago now, to be honest. Plus I like the way you say this name.”

“So Shane it is, then?”

“Shane it is.”

_________________

 

For the first time in years, Shane goes out on his birthday.

He can hear Ryan playing with Greg in the living room as he checks himself out in the hallway mirror, making sure his clothes are coordinated— he’s never been great at keeping up with fashion.

Everything feels distant when he spots a white hair growing from his head for the first time in fifty years.

The defibrillator, when applied to his heart, had restarted the ageing process in his cells, unfreezing his DNA.

“Everything okay? You ready?” Ryan asks when he comes back to the living room looking a little shaken.

“I couldn’t be more ready.”

As they walk out of the apartment to go ring in the new year and celebrate Shane’s birthday, the words have never been truer.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd love to know what you think of it!! <3


End file.
